千八百二十八： Baseball!

I went to a baseball match with Ryo today, Hanshin Tigers vs Yokohama Bay Stars!

Great weather, breezy but sunny. we had great seats, just behind the Tiger's bench area, and nearly ground level. :D

The match was a little depressing, with the star player playing badly, and the Bay Stars leading all the way at 2-0 until the last inning.

Many fans left after the 7th inning, I guess it was hard to think the tigers would win, even though 2 points was not that hard to catch up .. we stayed till the end, hoping against hope that some miracle would happen, and the star player got replaced when it was his turn to bat again. hehe. some angry old man behind me was shouting at him when he made the same simple error twice when it was his turn before & got striked out. but very exciting the last inning, very high tension in the air since no one expected the tigers to win. When they got their first point we were jumping around in the air, then 2 more players finally made hits & got to the bases, then 1 more out, and the last batter hit the ball to the far end and the catcher missed it, allowing 2 runners to hit home & the game was set!

Tigers out in the field after they got their 3rd point :)

Ecstatic Fans releasing balloons into the air

During the match, video clip of the Bay Stars player getting a hit.

Lucky 7 Balloons at the 7th Inning:

Last week, swamped with work, had no time to do anything. still busy with the scrap book. about 60% of the first book. now I'm thinking how i can finish the 2nd book by next sunday :(

got the Iphone 3GS! went to repair the sg Iphone, they couldn't check the hardware, and the fact was that it really couldn't detect any wifi anywhere, they couldn't do anything. In the end, just upgraded my jp phone anyway, since the 3Gs went on sale on Friday. realised the Video functionality is just multiple shots of photos. oh well, no hurry to exchange the sg phone, since the warranty is until September.

Ryo made an attempt to unpack his boxes & now the bookshelves are up. We bought more shelves yesterday for the bedroom, so I could put in my bears and stuff as well, & I finally managed to get rid of some cardboard boxes as well too & the bedroom is looking much better now :) Hope things go better from now on.

千八百二十七： Cookie Deco

Cookie Deco on Saturday, conducted by an ex Capcom colleague turned Pattisserie. She ready made the cookies/cupcakes & taught us how to put icing & cream & the silver salt beads.

Particularly proud of these 2, I can't bear to eat them yet:

High Heel Cup Cake

J for...

went to watch Rookies on Saturday as Ryo had free tickets. But Ryo woke up too late.. then we could only watch the 6pm show and walk around Yodobashi for a while before going home. W/o buying any fan/oven etc again. :S

managed to get tape for my scrap book at only 40yen due to the 500 yen discount from the point card :D

Yesterday did ironing. not feeling happy at all.

千八百二十六： Burning out..

Haven't been blogging cos was busy with work & the wedding scrapbook.

making a scrapbook is pretty tedious. & I realised that without planning, the house could turn into a war zone with photos strewn all over the place and the tools, pencils, markers, paper, embossing powders, stamps.

Sick of work. very sick.

and the house is in such a mess because the husband don't bother to help clear up. even if he sees a mess.

& MIL & SIL (sister in law) is treating me like an IT helpdesk. MIL called me on the way out to dinner yesterday to ask me where is the underscore key on the keyboard. I told her I was outside and can't remember exactly. She refused to hang up. I had no choice but to walk around to see if there was any keyboard, and entered the place where they sold monthly train passes, walk very near to the counter to just steal a long glance & find the underscore key. (the staff looked at me weirdly of course). SIL called me during dinner to asked for help on blocking an adult site pop up that kept popping up. I tried to explain where the pop up blocker option was in IE, but she couldn't even understand where Internet options etc were.. so I said I'll check when I get home. :( I don't mind helping but I wished they would understand when I said I would check later and not expect immediate answers when I was outside. you could perhaps call your son if you expect immediate answers? Does my job means its less impt so that u can call on me any time to answer your questions immediately while you don't dare to call your son cos his work is more impt? I'm sure he can tell you where the underscore key is on the keyboard as much as anyone can, no need IT skill.

Dinner with Maya & Abe-san & Inoue san & Ryo at Maimon Oyster Bar & Charcoal Grill. Superb .. love to eat oysters :D think i ate 10. they drank like moet chandon champagne, piper champagne, redwine etc. quite abit.

ok I'll try to show the house's mess later.

千八百二十五： Sports Day

Went to see Ryo's nephew's sports day on Saturday.

Quite interesting, all the students were split into red team vs white team and all their victories were to chalk up overall points for their team. They had some games like tug the pole (as in the pic) but I was wondering it was really a feat for primary school kids to drag the pole back to their line.

The sports day was supposed to have begun at 9am, but. Ryo hadn't told me about it, and his sister in law only called me at nearly 2pm. when i reached there, MIL was really surprised to see me & I think she was quite embarrassed that she didn't remember to call me to go. She mumbled something about, oops, didn't know you were going to be here, there's no more bento for you, some embarrassed excuse & I just couldn't be bothered. When you need help, u just invite yourself to my place, when you have family events you forget about me, oh well, what more can i say.. Apparently my attire of tank top & shorts drew attention as well, since all the japanese parents were dressed such that no amount of UV could get to them (caps, jeans, long sleeves, umbrellas etc). I was already feeling so warm in my attire, I don't know how they can stand the heat.

After the event, went to Ryo's brother's place to have whatever's left of the bento food, & stayed to chat with them and they treated me to 焼肉 dinner :D .

Spent sunday sleeping until like 4pm (omg!!) then had to wake up to start on the wedding photos scrap book.. have no energy / drive to do anything about it still; could barely wake up this morning.

千八百二十四： イカ墨パスタ

Ryo's mum (known as MIL in future) sprung a surprise visit yesterday to my place. She called me at 9am asking if she could come over at 10.30am i thought "what?!" and told her to come in the afternoon. The last time she had asked to come over on a weekday morning but I was in tokyo and didn't hear her phone call. I was barely awake & had to clean up the house in a hurry amidst doing my work. She asked why i didn't pick up the phone at first and I said I was in a meeting and she got all confused "what meeting? where are you??" i was like "??? teleconf.. you know, work? " then she was like .. "huh? work?" then i got tired of answering her questions since I was feeling grumpy from lack of sleep as well. I asked why she was coming over, then she just repeated she wanted to come over at 10.30... I got kinda irritated and said no, afternoon, i have work & she was like.. ok ,.. afternoon... and she didn't even call again to confirm the time & just showed up at my door at 1.30pm. !!!

& ended up I only was able to have lunch at 3++ pm after she left. and she snooped around, opening every drawer, opening every door & I was like .. ok... i didn't know japanese pple were like that?!? I was firstly unwilling to let people come to the house when it's such a mess after the housewarming fiasco at ryo's collegues' place, and 2ndly, why insist on coming over on a weekday? i"m at home but i didn't have time to keep chatting with you. She had PC questions and I tried to help her as much as possible, then after i finished she sat on the couch while i tried to finish up my work & kept chatting when I was only half-listening to her which might offend her both ways. - not paying attention to her / ignoring her while doing my work?? I mean, I'm fine with you visiting on wkends if you really insist, but weekdays, I don't want to offend you and I have no time to keep you company with tea/ cookies & chatting.. Luckily Ryo understood (he doesn't even answer / reply sms on his hp during working hours) & he said he would speak to her.

after she left, had to rush my work because I was supposed to get the scrapbook materials for the wedding photos & meet ryo for dinner. bought 2 white bound hardcovers, some stickers for printing & also stamps. :D can't wait to start making the books tmr.. we went to look at ovens and steamers & i think we'll end up with toaster ovens. I had squid ink pasta for dinner, it wasn't good because it was too garlicky and oily. looked pretty good though.

千八百二十三： スシロ

After yoga yesterday, we headed for some conveyor belt sushi because I was too lazy to cook dinner.
ate quite a bit.. & they have all sorts of sushi there..

Meat Ball Sushi

塩焼肉寿司

Ryo was afraid of the paparazzi catching his eating shots

we ate 16 dishes of sushi! + 1 chawanmushi

千八百二十二： Monsoon

Asian *mainly thai* dinner with Maya at Monsoon last night. As usual we overate..

I liked the pad thai (first time ever..) not too oily, not too dry, a little sour & sweet.. first time i ate 70% of it myself.

千八百二十一： Colourful Food

yesterday's dinner:

 

Ladies' fingers with tomatoes, beansprouts & salmon bits.

Ryo asked me how I came up with this, i think I was looking in the fridge for whatever there was and just mixing / matching the food according to colour so that the dish would be colourful & 開胃　& what mom used to do. I'm so not going to cook when I go back Singapore... my mom's cooking is the best!!!

Since I bought a new camera, will try to post pics more often .. (or at least until this 三分熱度 is over for me to put up pics) dinner with Maya tonight, should be having Thai food..

this morning I couldn't wake up again (body felt sore from yoga yesterday).

千八百二十： Domesticity

finally managed to wake up and COOK breakfast this morning.. (last week I was lazy and feeling so tired from all the running and just steamed everything the night before in the rice cooker so he can get up & just eat & I lie in until he has to leave so that I see him to the door with the good bye kiss... )

something simple, salmon with ネギ (leek?) for him to eat with rice:

and then tried to sleep after he left, but saw the weather being so good, decided to just do the laundry as well.. cleaned the loo too... and then it's time for work .. :( i'm just beginning to feel sleepy!!

千八百十九： Wasted Sunday

Today, we went to Ryo's colleague's place for housewarming at 高槻市.

I kinda felt that it was a mistake to have gone.. he had only moved in 2 weeks ago, the whole place was a mess (no place to even sit properly) and about 9 pple went... wat a squeeze. and i dunno why they kept changing the channel to some boring show, when I could have watched movie / drama reruns. argh. then they just kept dragging on the stay .. from 1pm - 8++pm.. need to stay so long meh?!?! was bored out of my mind. and I had to do grocery shopping still, and had wanted to go shop for lights. what a wasted day!!

I found out that Japanese grapes are tiny!! about 1cm in diameter only...

A random shot of the sky today:

千八百十八： Ixy 210is

bought a new camera instead of a phone :( Ryo made me trade in my ixus 40 for 1500yen. Sayonara my best friend of the past 5 years... 

went to arrange the polaroids in my 手帳 we took at the airport on the day I left. and took a pic with the new camera.

I don't know if its better. the photo looks less grainy i think? but since I can use back my battery & memory card & everything, i have no complaints.

千八百十七： お久しぶり！

there are soyjoy vending machines in japan!

quite surprised, but then there are vending machines for everything in Japan, including batteries.

Met ex-capcom colleagues for dinner last night at a fusion japanese restaurant, (Unoya meaning Rabbit's house) and there were rabbit pictures & logos every where. their signature dessert was a rabbit mochi icecream dish:

Looks wonderful but it was hard to start eating such a cute rabbit. I ordered the crepe green tea ice cream instead:

delicious!! very filling though.. and photo with half of the girls:

 

we exchanged mail addresses & contact numbers, so that we can go for dinner again :D all the ladies at dinner were still single.. so i said i would introduce any guy friends even from sg to them.. any one?

& received my purchases from scrapbook.com this morning! pretty fast, only took a week :D bought this monogram stamper, so that i can personalise my stationery (ie envelops etc to write to people), and just for fun la actually.. and some ink, paper, stickers, stamps etc. so happy~! here's the stamper :

going to play with my new toys now. :D

千八百十六： Aquos Shot

everytime i watch the japanese 花より男子, i always tear when poor Tsukushi  sees Doumyoji kiss Shigeru when Tsukushi finally had the courage to recreate the first date "恵比寿Garden Place,　時計広場、1時” the way he asked her out the first time.. :( even though it was a misunderstanding but I could really feel her heart breaking. ...(T.T) 

trying to convince Ryo to get me this phone : http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/product/3G/933sh/
If I get this, I can not buy a new camera (at least for the time being) since this phone camera is pretty gd (10MP) & my own camera seems to be working better nowadays when I start thinking of buying a new camera. :D but the phones are so expensive... nowadays the phone companies are subsidising less for phones, so users have to fork out extra like $30 over 26 months if they get a new phone (thats for new line / >2 years after last hp change) and they pay more if they changed their phone less than a year ago like $50 per month?! in the end the phone will cost about $500+ .... :(

Yoga class yesterday was the same as Monday's, just different teacher. I like this instructor better, she explained why we were doing the poses we did before we started, making things easier than the class on Monday. but it was easier yesterday, cos I did everything on Monday already :)

千八百十五： To The Herbs

Had dinner with maya at "To the Herbs", an italian restaurant at Nishinomiya gardens. Maya always orders alot of stuff, but ended up all were delicious, so I quite enjoyed it.

maya's Pasta, I don't know what it's called

Cheese Pizza with honey.. this was so good I ate more than half

Lasagne + Mentaiko Pasta

5 berry waffle parfait

super full now, but very very delicious dinner.

The capcom pple in Osaka are having a welcome dinner for me this thursday; wonder what we'll be eating next!

千八百十四： Wardrobe Up!

Finally set up the wardrobe & arranged all my clothes! finally no more digging out clothes from vacuum bags.

no space for Ryo unfortunately.. but he'll get wardrobe number 2 soon :)
meeting maya for dinner tonight, recently the camera seems to be working fine after i thought I would buy a new camera, now have to rethink if i really should buy one. I want to get a new hp though... hmm so many things to buy...

千八百十三： えびせん

Eating prawn crackers now:

This will go so so well with coke!! but i must 忍！！ or else i can't sleep tonight.

Collected my visa this morning, went to change my alien card's date, only 1 year, means i have to renew again next year :( so ex every year about $150... then went to the yoga class.. which was full of aunties who were really good at yoga! first yoga class I perspired so much...

千八百十二： Ironing

i ironed like 10 shirts & 2 dresses today.

It took me 5 hours though.....

Finally figured out what is the correct process of ironing.. and from about 1 hour per shirt to maybe 20 minutes each? not bad.. i think I'll only do Ironing once a month though... it's really tiring... and i don't even wear any shirts!!

Sunset today: